John Michael Talbot: I've done all these things, I've won these awards,

I've sold millions of records, I've sold hundreds of thousands of books,

I've started a community, yadda, yadda, yadda, yadda, yadda, played with the

Pope, and now at this point in my life, it's like, well, that's all straw.

Oh,

How does one blend the depth of monastic spirituality with

the contemporary rhythms of life?

Today on Seek Go Create, we're joined by John Michael Talbott, a pioneer and legend

in Christian music, whose life's work has

not only won awards, but has also touched the hearts of millions around the world.

With the release of his 59th album, Late Have I Loved You, and his 38th book

and first autobiography with the same name, John Michael continues to inspire

through his melodies and his words.

As the founder and general minister of the Brothers and Sisters of

Charity at Little Portion Hermitage in Arkansas, John Michael embodies

a unique blend of artistic talent and deep spiritual commitment.

Through his inner room of spirituality, he extends an invitation to all for

a deeper relationship with Christ.

John Michael, welcome to seat.

Go create.

John Michael Talbot: Well, thanks for having me into your seat.

Go create home, Tim.

Oh,

monastic lifestyle.

I just shared with you before we hit record, my simple lifestyle, not quite the

same, but my RV, but we're traveling on the road and, and I'm just so intrigued

and excited about this conversation, John Michael, before we get started,

though, before we get started, let me just ask my sort of, I guess my first.

Icebreaker type question that I ask most people and it's going to be fun

with you because of your deep rich experience But if somebody asks you

currently what you do What's your answer?

What's your answer to them?

John Michael Talbot: Well, I tend not to respond to what you do.

I prefer to say who I am because I have for years and years and

years said, don't define yourself.

Define yourself by what you do.

Define yourself by who you are.

in my music ministry, for instance, I said, I don't

define myself by my ministry.

I define myself by who I am in Christ.

And, if I define myself by who I am, my ministry can be

whatever God wants it to be.

It can be nothing but contemplative prayer.

At this point in my life, I'm moving more and more into solitude.

And at the beginning of my ministry, I spent enormous

periods of time in solitude.

We can get into that.

and the ministry flowed out of that in utter distinction to what was the typical

pattern in Christian contemporary music.

Yet my recordings vastly outsold anybody else's.

for several decades, I outsold anybody else, up until the advent of Amy Grant.

And then in Sparrow Records, the enormously talented Stephen

Curtis Chapman finally outsold me.

But for the whole first two or three decades in Sparrow Records, I

was hands down the biggest seller.

And I wasn't trying to sell anything.

And I wasn't trying to have a ministry.

I was trying to be as much in communion with Christ as I possibly could be.

And that's still my position today.

I just wrote a letter today to a very, very big gathering that's going to be

going on in the United States, some 80, 000 people, that I was invited to

go and sing one of my signature songs.

And I've been really, really struggling in my heart that I

didn't feel led to go and be there.

Everything from the external perspective said I should go.

And I've done huge gatherings, papal events with 800, 000 people,

500, 000 people, 120, 000 people.

So I've done those kinds of events.

This one is not quite that big.

It's about 80, 000 people.

But I didn't have a peace in my spirit.

And I'm waiting yet another day, but I think I'm going to send him a letter

that says, I don't have a peace in my heart about being part of this.

I will pray for you.

I'll, I'll be in my hermitage praying seriously for the success of this

event, but I don't think the Holy Spirit wants me to be part of this.

So it's more important to be in communion with God in Christ, and

then let the Whatever you do, flow from that than it is to define

yourself according to what you do.

Defining yourself according to what you do is a real, I believe,

a treacherous, because then you begin to possess your doing or your

ministry, per se, and you suffocate it.

And then God is not free to work through it or whatever

he wills to do in your life.

He may call you to something else

and you have to be open to that change, to that different direction

that he may be calling you to.

And, the greatest doing in monastic life is to pray and do nothing but pray.

the the challenge that Many people at one of the I was smiling

as you were saying parts of that.

First of all, I'd I agree It's to me.

I believe what you

do is a very It's a superficial question, but it's a question

that many people will ask.

And the cool thing about what we've done on, on the show here is that we

will, we will often veer off of that because of exactly what we're saying.

In fact, two or three shows ago, I think it was a Steven DeSilvo.

We did get off on this conversation of being Versus doing.

And the

reason I was smiling as you were speaking, John Michael, is because I've got one

page of notes here with things that I

hope to get to.

I may not during this conversation, but at the very bottom I wrote being or doing.

At the bottom

of this page.

And I wanted to have a conversation with you.

And my follow up question is you you've got such a rich history.

I read, I read your book late.

Have I loved you over the last couple of days?

Listen to some of the musics, but I have to share that.

One of the things I did last night.

My wife stepped outside and we have, we're here in the RV and we've got a awning and

the weather was beautiful here in Arizona.

And she stuck her head out as I was finishing reading it.

In fact, and she said, she goes, stay out there.

I'm going to bring dinner out.

And here's the speaker set up some music.

And I went back to, I went on iTunes and I hadn't, and I wanted to

refresh my memory to, Mason profit.

Cause I

knew I knew some of that.

yeah.

we're going way back here.

So pardon me, but, but, but here's, and so we listened to Mason profit over,

over our dinner, just so you know, but my question as a follow up is that from

reading your book, listening to music, just looking at the scope of your journey.

It's, it's been that journey where along the way, have you had high points, low

points where you were doing more than you were being, you know what I mean?

You were in that.

And again, we like to talk to success here.

You were chasing or pursuing success versus being who you were.

And anyway, that's a big question, but any thoughts on that?

First of all, thank you for our dinner music.

We appreciate it.

John Michael Talbot: Oh, my, my pleasure.

Well we certainly were with Mason Prophet.

that goes back to when I was like 15 years old.

So we were part of the country rock, experiment.

At the beginning, the birds really birthed this new genre.

with Sweetheart of the Rodeo and several new bands picked up

on it in Southern California.

We were in Chicago.

We were an Indianapolis based band and our producer was in Chicago.

And he said, you guys ought to try this because you, John, you play banjo and

Dobro and you're a string guy wizard.

you play lead guitar, et cetera, et cetera.

So I picked up the pedal steel and we did a demo and they sold it.

It went to a small label.

We ended up eventually being on Warner Brothers, doing five records.

And we were the, expected new super group in the record industry.

Terry was, my older brother of six years was, absolutely stunning on stage.

He was charismatic.

I mean, the crowds worked into an absolute frenzy, but we

didn't know how to make records.

We really didn't know how to record.

So we could never get what happened live onto record.

So we had two people.

Jerry, Jerry, Weintraub wanted to manage us and Joe Smith at Warner

Brothers really, they got together and suggested, look, you've got these guys

from your high school years in the band.

They're really good.

Keep them for live.

But in the, in the studio, bring in studio players, you and John, he's talking

to Terry, you guys be the front guys.

You sing and John, you do the, the string stuff, pedal steel, banjo, dobro.

But bring in studio players like Lee Sklar and Russ Kunkel, which we

eventually did by the way on Talbot Brothers, and pick five, let us pick

five hit records from other writers, and then you write five songs.

And some of them may be hits, but usually you guys aren't writing hit records.

And Terry turned them down in loyalty to our band guys, and they said, we

really respect your loyalty, but, you're not going to go anywhere.

So we never made it.

But we were chasing a dream.

See, we were chasing after stardom and, but I saw the futility of all of it.

So I began searching for God.

I began searching for philosophy, religion, and that took me into Taoism

and Buddhism and Hinduism and Sufism and the Essenes and Greek philosophy.

I was also reading a revised standard Bible that, my grandma had given me

and the red letters were jumping out.

But I, I didn't have a personal encounter with the God that, or the

divine being or the, the transcendent other that everybody was talking about.

So after about a year of praying for an encounter, I had an encounter

with Jesus and we got involved in the early days of the Jesus movement.

we were still seeking success, and in the early days of the Jesus movement, they

call it the Jesus revolution now, but we just called it Jesus, the Jesus movement.

We called our music, Jesus music, and we hung out with all of the early folks.

And we ended up playing a festival called the Road Home Festival.

We had, the band had broken up and then reconstituted itself as a Christian band.

We had Al Perkins from Manassas and Terry and me, a couple of different drummers.

and, and we, we headlined this festival.

And a lot of the Christian, singers were on this festival.

And we ran into a guy named Billy Ray Hearn, who ended up founding Sparrow

Records, and he wanted to sign us.

And we said, no, we're, we're breaking up.

This is our last gig because we wanted to be with Arista, which was Clive

Davis, who was one of the big, big names in, the music business back then.

And but he, he thought we had gone too much into rock and roll and

he wanted more of a country sound.

He liked the Jesus thing because it was immensely popular back.

that was back when Jesus was on the cover of Time Magazine and stuff.

So he didn't mind the Jesus stuff.

But I told Billy, I said, would you want to sign me as a folk singer?

as a kind of a folk rock thing.

And he said, sure.

So I ended up signing with Sparrow.

Terry followed suit.

And, I began playing fellowships and coffee houses and Christian churches on

the circuit, the Christian Contemporary Circuit, all across the United States.

But they were very much divided amongst themselves.

And that bothered me.

So I began a search for the church, the one holy Catholic and

apostolic church, and it led me to reading the early church fathers.

I figured if the Bible came out of the early church, I should

read about the early church.

So I was totally surprised to find the primitive expressions

of what today we would call the Catholic Church in those writings.

I didn't, I wasn't looking to be a Catholic.

I wasn't, didn't like Catholics.

I still don't like all the Catholics, and I am one, and, at the same time I

was hungry for more of a contemplative.

mystical, when I say mystical, it just means the mystery of our faith,

Hmm.

So

John Michael Talbot: movement.

And so I started reading the imitation of Christ and about Francis of

Assisi and Benedict of Nursia, the desert fathers and mothers and all

the early monastic expressions.

And I went, oops, they're Catholic too.

So I was getting a double barrel whammy of this thing.

So I sought out a Franciscan priest in Indianapolis.

His name was Father Martin Walter.

He became my spiritual father, my mentor till the day he died.

And in 1978, I became a Catholic and I thought, well, that's it.

I'm done.

my doing back to your question of seeking to be successful is over.

now I've just got to be, because so I, I built a hermitage and just moved into

a hermitage and I did one last swan song and it was called the Lord's Supper and I

went to the record company and I, I, I put it together with a group of charismatics

who were going the same direction.

I was, they ended up becoming Orthodox.

I became Catholic and it was this gorgeous setting of the mass.

Billy Ray Hearn, I remember him, he was my musical mentor till the day he died.

And, and he said, well, how am I going to, sell a Catholic mass

to a bunch of Southern Baptists?

I said, Billy Ray, I have no clue.

it's my last record, just put it out.

And he says, okay, it's going to flop.

I said, I know it's going to flop.

It's my last record.

So they put it out.

And it became the biggest record for Sparrow Records that year.

And one of the biggest records, probably in the top three.

in Christian contemporary music that year.

And then I went back to my hermitage.

I disappeared just reading and praying and studying and placing

myself under Father Martin Walter, living with the Franciscan friars.

And then I did another one called Come to the Quiet.

And it was just the Psalms, the settings of the Psalms and

a few New Testament canticles.

And it was a totally different record.

Brought it to the record company.

They wanted another record because they just had this huge hit with me, but it was

quiet and they said, Oh, it's too quiet.

Americans won't know what to do with it.

There's too much space in it.

He said, well, put it out.

And they said, okay, we'll put it out.

We just, we, we made all this money with you.

We can afford to lose some money.

So they put it out.

Well, it sold three times more.

And that, Tim, that became my pattern is what I'm getting at.

I stopped trying to do something and I was in the hermitage just being, just praying

and things began to happen on their own.

the pattern in Christian Contemporary Music to this day is you go out and

you do 150 concerts a year and you put a record out every year or two,

and you're promoting your record.

You're doing a lot.

And I was just praying a lot.

And some music would come out every now and then, and we'd release it

and it would go through the roof and it would outsell everybody else's.

So that has become my pattern pretty much in life.

Now it changed later.

I began doing 40 concerts a year, but it wasn't 150.

It never has been.

it changed in 2008, and I'd be with a whole different group.

like an itinerant ministry where I was just going like St.

Paul, doing itinerant ministry.

I'll tell that later if you want to.

But, the, the normal pattern for me was just radically

different than the typical thing.

The main thing was to be and to let things happen.

And so that's how I've lived my life.

And, and I want to, I do want to come back to that.

There's something that I read a few times and I even read this.

I think when I went to iTunes going back to even just a quick Mason

profit question, the comment that was made was almost something like

they were the biggest or best band that never quite made it, or I mean,

I may be getting the wording wrong.

John Michael Talbot: The biggest band that no, that no, that

the biggest band you've never

That's something like that.

Yeah.

And, and, and my,

my question is, I mean, you were extremely young.

Obviously you had, your older brother was around and all that, but have you

ever, especially in your quiet time wondered If you had air quotes for

those listening had made it, what kind of trajectory that would put you on?

Because it seems to me like you were seeking.

I mean, one of the songs I saw on Mason prophet last night was better find Jesus.

It said 1972.

I don't know if that was, I don't know if that was the actual year,

but I mean, there was still, there was still a spiritual hunger.

Even in the midst of all of that, but if all of a sudden you were,

you ran across Doobie Brothers, all those folks, all of a sudden you

guys had, top hits, things like that.

Sometimes that starts messing with us a little bit.

Any thoughts on that at all?

I know, I know it's hypothetical.

John Michael Talbot: Yeah, I mean, towards the end, I had become a Christian.

Terry had become a Christian, and the band was playing with it, and

we were starting to sound better.

on record.

There were lots of Christians, Jesus people that followed us from gig to gig,

from place to place, and supported us.

Had we broken, what would have happened?

I don't know.

There was a lot of drugs in the band still.

lots of cocaine.

I think it would have been very bad for us.

when Terry and I left Talbot Brothers, I heard from, Terry, who heard it from

some of the guys in Eagles that left, that we were really considered for the

Eagles, and they opted for, and I think they made a wise choice for Joe Walsh,

instead, and they wanted something more of a rock, more of a rock and roll,

direction, that was fine because they were, they were doing things in their

concerts and they, they always had after concerts, the public didn't hear about

at the time, but they were really bad things happening in their after concerts.

And I I would, I just wouldn't have put up with it.

I would have just left the band.

but Mason Prophet, there was a lot of drugs.

And sometimes those drugs were not pure.

Some, for instance, some of the cocaine that the guys got was laced with heroin.

And I, I saw, I mean, we had to carry the guys on the bus a lot of

times, and they were just a mess.

I think had we become really successful, it would have killed some of our guys.

And I think Terry would have just become an ego, Because I know my older brother.

I think he would have, his ego would have just gone through the roof.

And for me, I would have just been very dissatisfied with the whole scene.

I w I was on my way out anyway.

So one of the things that you did though, and this is

I think where I want us to spend a good bit of time on, and that is this

solitude and this monastic lifestyle and contemplative, these words that

my personality wrestles with because I may be more like your brother Terry.

And I know people listening

in, we've got leaders, entrepreneurs, this is, I think

this is a really cool conversation for, for anyone did, did that.

Lifestyle and what you saw, did that drive you in going not just

into Christianity per se, but into a, almost a solitude, a hermitage.

And also I want to share my, my only experience with what would be, more of a

monastery or, we, I grew up in Conyers, Georgia, and there was A group of Trappist

monks, Trappist monks there.

Yeah, And we would visit there and I would say, this is cool.

I remember father Francis, our cub scouts visited

here and I did a foot race against him and he pulled up his

little tunic, his little gang.

He let me tell you that for his aid, he was fast.

He blew us out of the way,

but it was always fascinating to me.

But I always felt it challenging for my personality.

So what is it that drove you?

I mean, I don't want to say the pendulum really swung, but it really drove you

to the solitude and leaving a lot of that behind because so many people,

John Michael attempt to have one foot in this system and then another foot

in the spiritual, that spiritual realm.

I don't even know if that question makes sense, but

John Michael Talbot: No, it makes a lot of sense.

The, I mean, let me give you an example of St.

Francis of Assisi.

Who technically in the West is not monastic.

He's actually a mendicant, which means open handed.

his hands were empty.

He was a beggar.

but Francis lived 75 percent of his time in prayer.

He only spent 25 percent of his time in action.

Yet Francis is remembered as the most apostolic man in the

Western church in all of history.

the Franciscans carpeted Europe.

They changed Europe.

They were a peace movement.

There were all of these, wars between the different, feudal lords in Europe.

He put a stop to it without even trying to put a stop to it.

It's just that everybody joined the Franciscans.

they either joined the friars.

Or many of the women became sisters and many of the lay people became a

third order or tertiary Franciscans.

And one of the rules of the tertiary Franciscans was you

could no longer pick up a sword.

So they couldn't fight.

So people learned how to get along with each other.

It was an enormous peace movement.

without anybody calling for a peace movement.

They just became Franciscans and it changed the face of Europe.

And they, I mean, they were the first missionaries in China.

They went all the way to China.

by the end of Francis's life, they had gotten all the way to

England and he lived in Italy.

That was quite an accomplishment.

In a day when the only travel that they knew was going by foot, going on foot.

this guy was this apostolic guy.

He preached.

When he preached, he preached to 50, 000 people at a time.

When Francis showed up in town, everybody came to hear him.

He healed.

He preached.

He cast out devils.

he tamed the wolf at Gubbio.

He preached to animals.

animals that were creating havoc.

In local facilities, he would preach to them and talk to them

and they would become peaceful.

It was enormous.

It was amazing.

But he spent 75 percent of his time in prayer, either in the hermitage.

He founded 24 hermitages.

He died by the time he was 45 and he didn't start his

religious career until he was 24.

in a 20 year period, thereabouts, he accomplished all of this.

All of this.

It's, it's stunning.

So he was an entrepreneur.

He was an entrepreneur, but he, but he was an entrepreneur because he first

tapped into the power of the Holy Spirit in his life through deep, deep prayer.

And at the end of his life, he received the stigmata, which are the, the wounds

of Christ in his hands, his feet, and his side, which debilitated him.

He could no longer.

walk.

He had to be carried everywhere.

And those wounds, worked miracles in, I mean, all, all people did

was they looked at them and they were healed by Jesus Christ.

So Francis, there were other Franciscans, Bernadine of Siena, John of the, James of

the Marches, John of Capistrano, all of these friars were first and foremost, they

created houses of prayer and hermitages.

and movements gathered around them.

But when they preached, they preached to 30, 40, 50, 000 people at a time.

So again, they were, they were enormously successful in their ministry, but

they didn't focus on their ministry.

They focused on their prayer.

I think that's really, really important.

and it.

And it's quite a contrast from what we see from much of what we see today in

ministry circles, business circles, political, all of our systems that

it's the opposite of what we see to me.

John Michael Talbot: Yeah, but I'll go you one further, and

that is, there's no dichotomy.

Once you reach a place of contemplative prayer, there's no

dichotomy between work and prayer.

The Benedictines say, ora et labora, pray and work.

So when you really break through to contemplative prayer, you are a prayer.

You are a prayer, So Francis would say that, essentially you become a prayer.

Your whole life becomes a prayer, whether you're preaching or whether

you're in silence and solitude praying, your life becomes a prayer.

And when people are simply in your presence, they are

touched by the Spirit of God.

I'd love to do a couple of things maybe by just to get some

definitions as we, and then we can go deeper into some of the conversation.

But If you could quickly for someone who didn't grow up around church

circles and would be, I guess I'm in Protestant circles nowadays,

but the word hermitage, do a quick definition for hermitage for me.

Cause I'm pretty confident if I'm a 60 year old dude, I'm

going, what exactly is it?

I think I know what is a hermitage

John Michael Talbot: Well, a hermitage comes from the word hermit, which comes

from the Greek word eromite, and the word eromite means wilderness or desert.

The word monk comes from the Greek word monos.

Which means one and alone.

So anytime Jesus went to be alone in prayer in scripture, He is, it's one

or the other derivative of monos, okay?

And when He went, for instance, He was driven by the Spirit

into the desert, right?

For 40 days.

Or He was, some, some, different scriptures say different things.

One scripture says He was driven by the Spirit.

to be tempted by the devil in the, in the wilderness.

The others say he was called by the spirit, both are pretty strong.

but the word desert is Eremos, Eremos, So to be a hermit means that you're

going aside from the hustle and bustle of daily life into a solitary place.

hermitages are of two kinds.

the first is called semi eremitism, and it's, it's a cluster of cells.

And cell just means a small room.

If you look at the, the, the Latin, it's just a, a, a small room.

And Jesus says when you pray, where, where are you supposed to go?

to the closet

John Michael Talbot: Go to the, to the inner

in a room,

Yeah.

John Michael Talbot: which is, it's actually the store house.

In scripture, that means the storehouse.

So it basically means go into the pantry.

So consider in your house, a pantry.

Well, there's no light.

There's no, except for artificial light.

there's no distractions in there, but there's a lot of good food.

So to go in there means that you're going to a place where you're not distracted.

So the cell is a place where you're not going to be distracted.

and you're going to be able to really focus on God.

And by the way, it's the place where heaven comes to earth, like celestial.

So it's the place where heaven and earth meet.

So a gathering of cells around common buildings like a chapel or a church and

a refectory where the monks come together and eat either a couple of times a week.

Or once or twice a day.

So that's what we have here at Little Portion Hermitage.

We have a cluster of cells around our church, our offices, our

common work areas, and also, our refectory or our dining room kitchen.

And we have one common meal together every day, for the whole community.

So that's what I mean by hermitage.

And then I, people can go off once they've lived that way of life for

a couple of decades, they can go off into greater periods of solitude.

So I spend my time down here.

You see my hermitage back there.

I can spend, I'm down here Monday through Friday.

I come up to the monastery on Sundays and holy days.

And since I'm the spiritual father of the community, I also teach.

And I have conferences with the brothers, as they need them or

once a week where they can talk to me about their spiritual life.

So that's, there are, there are more extensive periods of solitude for

So what about

the, the word monastic, how does then that fit in?

Cause that is not a word that is common in my vernacular monastic.

In fact, even ask you before we clicked on, am I pronouncing it correctly?

So monastic, so bring that into the equation.

John Michael Talbot: it means monos, one or alone, but there

are two different kinds of monks.

There are those who live.

in some form of hermitage, which was the original usage.

But very quickly, a guy named St.

Pacomius, expanded it to mean a group of people who live together as one

united, but they live in the desert.

So they are alone together in the desert.

So they are, and literally in Egypt, they were in the desert.

As monks moved into Europe, that just meant they live like we do out here.

We're two and a half miles from the nearest paved road, but

we're alone together as one group of people who are united.

So monos can also mean, and, and the word that is used is

koinonia, which means what?

Common, communion, or fellowship in scripture.

And that gets translated in the Latin to Cinebite or Cinebetical.

So there are Cinebetical monks and there are Aramedical, two different kinds.

It Does Yes.

And it's very helpful because it, it leads now to what I'd love for us to do.

And a lot of the time we have left, and that is to use some

of these principles and some of

this, some of this lifestyle to, to maybe convey to who's listening.

And even myself, because, it it's, I, we, We hear of someone like you

mentioned earlier, that 75 percent in prayer, and it's very difficult for many

people to get their head around that.

And you, you brought up distractions earlier.

And I guess my first big question is we start drilling down

and going down a few layers.

Are we a distracted society?

Are we so distracted that it makes what

you're talking about?

Almost impossible for many people.

I mean, listen, someone right now that I want to, I want to

identify the irony of this.

You're in your hermitage.

I'm in my RV.

We're speaking to each other via technology.

We're recording it.

And then we're going to put that out for people to listen in and we don't

want them to be distracted, but we want it to minister to them in some way.

So there is a bit of irony that I'm, I might be even interrupting you in

your solitude for us to have this conversation so that we to share with

people so they can learn how to be more.

Lead them wars.

Does that make sense?

John Michael Talbot: yeah, but, but I'll also say this.

I did, I did a podcast yesterday or day before yesterday with a

fella who's a bestselling author.

His name is Bob Goff.

And his, his podcast goes out to 10 million people.

And he says, we have to keep this podcast to less than 30 minutes because people

just won't listen to more than 30 minutes.

And, the average person, looks at their cell phone, get this,

every two seconds in America.

So they are looking at, I have mine set to a clock here.

So I know where we are.

They look at their cell phone every two seconds.

And if you watch television and I have a TV down here because I

used to have a TV show, called all things are possible with God.

Now I have an inner room school of spirituality, but I had to be able

to watch my own TV shows to make sure that they were airing properly the,

the, So I became acutely aware that the average, again, the average shot.

in a television show is only on that shot for a few seconds before

it shifts to another perspective or the shot is changing all the time.

Now go back and look at Alfred Hitchcock who wanted them to play

that scene all the way through.

He wanted the actors to act and play the scene all the way through

and to keep the camera pretty much steady all the way through.

And he would have a couple of camera angles and he might change them,

but he wanted the actors to act.

Nowadays, they don't do that.

They say a few lines, they break.

They say a few lines, they break.

There's still have to act, but he wanted the actors to actually act.

No more, no more, not like that.

So our our media has, has, infected us, infected us with

the illness of distraction.

We, we, we are distracted.

We, we cannot stay on a topic all the way through.

I'm, I'm reading or rereading not only my Bible, but I'm rereading a wonderful book.

called Orthodox Monasticism.

It's a refresher for me.

It's so important to be able to sit down and read a book.

It's a long book.

This is, nearly 500 pages long.

When I write a book nowadays, my editor says, you gotta keep it short because

Americans don't read long books anymore.

Most don't.

They gotta be short.

They gotta be about 40, 000 words.

They cannot sit down and read a like that.

I still believe that.

I read long books.

We were distracted.

And the average book has to be written on the level of a 6th grade reader.

That's just where we are.

yes, we are distracted.

Terribly distracted.

The idea of sitting down, hunkering down, and staying

focused, and, raising our we are.

awareness, deepening our prayer, deepening our consciousness, raising our education.

These things are long gone.

Now, I'm not going to put anybody down for it.

We have been indoctrinated to it.

I won't even say on purpose.

It's just easier by those who are controlling our media to get people there.

It's easy.

See, so we have been indoctrinated to it because it's easier for those who are

controlling our media to get us there.

So they've done it.

Okay.

Is it malicious?

probably not.

It's just easier.

It's just easier.

So we need to, those of us who are serious about our faith, about our

prayer, and about our entrepreneurship, we need to go deeper, deeper, deeper.

and go higher.

And we can.

We can.

Especially those of us who are Christians.

Serious Christians.

I'm not talking about the easy mega church Christian.

I'm talking about the serious, serious, apostolic, and historical Christian.

We can get there.

we're, and this is maybe judging slightly, but is

someone a serious Christian if they are attempting to have that time of

solitude, that time of quiet to live?

as distraction free as they

possibly can.

Is that how we discern the difference between someone who's a, I,

think I've heard someone say Chino, Christian in name only.

And the word Christian is, you mentioned Catholics earlier that

even Christians there's, I'm one and there's a lot of them.

I,

don't want to spend a lot of time around because I'm not even sure how

some people define that nowadays.

But, anyway, is that, is that solitude?

The separator.

John Michael Talbot: part of solitude is part of it.

It's not the whole, it's not the whole shoot and match.

it's, but it's a definite part of, of the serious contingency.

I like to use the word apostolic and the way you get to the apostolic is

to go back to the early church fathers and, and you go back to some of those

early monastics, see I'm on a crusade because from the third century on,

really the monastic church was the contemplative beating heart of the church.

East and West.

It was only after humanism in the West that we began to lose that.

The East never lost it, but, but the West lost it.

So Byzantine Catholics never lost it.

to some degree, both Byzantine Catholics and Orthodox lost.

It simply be because of the, the influence of Western Christianity in general.

Protestantism is very much a result of humanism and in Catholicism,

we begin to lose it as well.

When our religious orders began to be defined only in terms of

what they do and not who they are.

And this really got out of control in the United States when bishops needed, monks,

nuns, and religious, as missionaries.

We need you as educators, we need you in hospitals, we need you to do this,

that, we, they needed missionaries.

In the United States, we've really lost the sense of the

contemplative monastic church.

So I'm on a crusade to rediscover it and, and resurrect it.

And I know several, monastics, abbots, abbesses who are also on that crusade.

So one thing, John Michael, that was fascinating

to me, and this, this is this conversation has really led into it.

It's the being versus doing and spending time

in solitude and, and leading a distraction free life.

when you were talking about, the, the time that we have, we, that's one of the

reasons why it's difficult for me to have.

Conversations like this short, 20, 30 minutes, because it's difficult

to get into a lot of depth now in the same breath, we take 60 second clips from

this conversation and put it out places.

So someone can digest it.

So we, we're playing a little bit of that game, but I, I wanna, you

have done 59 albums, 38 books.

Extremely prolific for anyone out there who might be sitting here going,

yes, but how can I, they're still wrestling with this being versus doing.

I can guarantee you that they're still wrestling with, but how do I

John Michael Talbot: start

I believe God called me to do, to do this or to do that when.

I'm spending 75, I

mean, if we go back to a CC, 75 percent of my time in prayer or, or 10

minutes a day in prayer or whatever.

Obviously you, it's an overflow is the way I understand it.

Is there anything more you can tell me about,

John Michael Talbot: Silence.

if that's the right word, but you know, so you're, you're

definitely avoiding distractions, you're spending time in solitude and

quiet, but then out of that also see many people will try to make a formula

of that and I don't want to do that.

John Michael Talbot: have

and spending all that time in quiet and solitude

and contemplative prayer?

I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,

John Michael Talbot: to wait for the spark of the Holy Spirit.

I wait for the spark.

Or I wait for something, there's a, there's a federal judge that really wants

me to put a prayer of a saint to music.

And, I heard about it last October and I'm still mulling it.

And I, I might do it, but that was a spark.

It came from a very practical external source.

And, I'm really considering it.

So there are outside sources.

You could almost call them commissions, wouldn't you, for music.

I'm currently eyeball deep.

in Isaac the Syrian, really better called Isaac of Nineveh,

who is considered the pinnacle of Eastern, Christian monasticism.

He wrote exclusively for hermits.

People have asked me to write about him.

I don't consider myself worthy to write about him.

But I'm still mulling it.

I'm mulling that.

I have a lot of books that are still in the pipeline.

Bruno of Cologne, the founder of the Carthusians, is a written book.

Seraphim of Serov, we in the West call him the Saint Francis of Russia, is

already written and ready to go out.

I have another book called The Journey East, which is just on, Eastern

Christian spirituality, ready to, What's in, it's in editing right now.

So I'm three books ahead of myself.

those all came from Editors mainly saying are my own reading process,

and the Holy Spirit tapping me on the shoulder going Hey do that.

and then music is the same.

I just wait.

I just wait I'm in silence and I just wait for the Holy Spirit.

Hey John Michael do this And, my last recording came from me being very sick

in the hospital and my angel and the angel of death took me to paradise.

And I got to see all of my sins and all of God's forgiveness in one experience

where all I could do was weep.

And I wept every time I prayed, especially when I went to mass,

the roof of the church is like it came off and heaven and earth met.

And especially at the consecration, suddenly I was at the foot of the cross,

He was dying for me, I was at the empty tomb, I was on the Mount of Ascension, I

was in the upper room and the Holy Spirit was given, all of that became right now.

It was beyond words, and all I could do was weep, and it's still that way for me.

It's hard for me to go and pray in public now, after this.

And, and the Lord, the Lord said to me, try to put that to music.

So my last recording is trying to put some of that to music.

And I needed to update my biography, and Dan O'Neill has always been the

biographer, and my editor said, John, why don't you do it as an autobiography?

So I updated it as an autobiography.

I shortened it, put in several more stories that have never

been part of the biographies.

And I told my story about this experience in paradise and some fun stories about,

like the birds playing bumper cars with us when we were going to Champaign, Illinois.

Told some of the stories from a first person perspective that are

in some of the other biographies.

They got a little more personal and, and.

how hard it is to live in community, especially to found one.

Cause, that's that's the cross, brother.

And so I, I wrote this autobiography, but that was just

the Holy Spirit, to an editor.

the music was just the Holy Spirit whispering in my ear.

And I started playing around with music and took the I

took the, Confessions of St.

Augustine, and Late Have I Loved You, O Lord, his famous excerpt.

And I felt like Late Have I Loved You, everything, I've done all these

things, I've won these awards, I've sold millions of records, I've sold

hundreds of thousands of books, I've started a community, yadda, yadda,

yadda, yadda, yadda, played with the Pope, and now at this point in my life,

it's like, well, that's all straw.

Like Thomas Aquinas said about his Summa, Summa Theologica.

And,

Okay.

John Michael Talbot: I felt like that, All that is straw compared

to what I saw, what I experienced.

And that's where we're all going here.

That's where we're going, So

it was so helpful for me who knew of you, but didn't know you

well to read that because it was, it gave me a great glimpse and put some

pieces together, especially, preparing for this, but it just, it's great.

Good to do that.

So late, have I loved you?

That's the, the music and the book.

How should we look at success?

One of the things we talk about here, John Michaels, if we talk about success,

how, maybe I'll ask it this way.

How do you define success now?

What is success for you?

And then I've got one more question and we're wrapping up here.

John Michael Talbot: Yeah, am I doing God's will?

I can be poor as a church mouse, but if I'm doing God's will, I'm successful.

I can be, some of the, some of the most unhappy people in the world

I've ever met are, vastly wealthy.

And some of the happiest people I've met are poor.

I've met people in third world countries who are very happy

because they're doing God's will.

They're happier than I am.

And I met people who are really poor, who are just as unhappy as, the most

unhappy person here in the United States.

It's all success is based on happiness, your attitude, and

are you doing the will of God.

I think that's all it's about.

I, I used to know a couple.

they've both passed away now.

They had, had some terrible tragedies in their family.

And they were so happy.

Always happy.

His name was Jim, the husband.

And I asked him, I said, Jim, how are you always so happy?

And he says, I've, we've lost some children.

We've had some terrible tragedies.

And, We were so miserable for so many years, and finally, me and my wife sat

down together and we said, You know what?

This isn't working.

We're going to, we're, and they were believers.

They said, We're going to be happy.

We're going to choose to focus on God, and we're going to be happy.

We're going to do His will, and we're going to be happy.

And they, they did that.

They chose God's will, and they chose to be happy, and they were genuinely joyful.

People, they chose God's will and they chose joyfulness.

Isn't that powerful?

That is powerful.

And I think that's a great ending, even though I've probably got so many

other questions and so many things we could cover, but John Michael,

tell people how they could find

you and get in touch with you.

John Michael Talbot: go to, go to johnmichaeltalbott.

com.

check out our bakery.

it's how, one of the ways we support our monastery, littleportionbakery.

org.

We have some of the best granola in the world.

I'm not kidding.

We also have St.

Claire's breakfast cookies.

It's a grab and go cookie that is absolutely delightful.

We have St.

Anthony hermit bars.

For those of you who kind of love brownies, this is

a molasses based brownie.

It's nutritious, but it is truly delicious, and all

of it is made with prayer.

So check it out.

I think you'll be happy if you do.

Check out all my books and CDs and music.

You can stream it.

Check it out.

It's really important to our community on how we support ourselves so that

we can be praying for all of you.

And check out Joining Our Community.

either as a monk or as a nun, a single, a family member here at the monastery,

or check out our domestic community.

And please check out my, online spiritual school of spirituality.

it's called the Inner Room School of Spirituality.

We would love to have you on board.

So check that out as well.

So

those are just a few little, bald faced, advertisements.

I would typically ask where can people find you?

So we'll make sure we include all of that down in the link.

So go,

go check those

out.

John Michael, we're seek, go create.

Those three words, you can probably guess where those words come from their

scriptural base, but if I were to allow you or force you depending on what your

personality is to choose one of those.

Just in the moment that resonates more than the other two, which

would you choose and why seek go or create my final question,

John Michael Talbot: Seek.

Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added unto you.

Seek.

Seek.

Seek the kingdom of God through Jesus Christ, and all the rest falls into place.

John Michael, this has been such a great conversation.

I so appreciate it.

I'm going to recommend, I, like I've said, I've read the book.

I've listened to late.

Have I loved you?

If you've been listening in here, go check that out.

There's so much more here.

I, I am encouraged to spend more time in solitude.

And that's one of the reasons that I wanted to talk to John Michael.

I know that I need to lead a less distracted life and I am very confident

if someone's listening in, there's a good chance that you do also.

We appreciate you supporting our show.

Thanks for doing that.

We have new episodes every Monday until next time, continue being

all that you were created to be.